Our work

Place, Identity and Belonging

New creative work
Mandala’s three-year debut programme uses the live experience of young people, supported by academic research, to create exciting new plays in collaboration with high-calibre playwrights, which tour nationally and internationally with a professional cast.

Springboard for debate
The plays are also a catalyst for discussion and dynamic, interactive workshops within local communities.

Informing future policy
The results of these debates feed back into research and ultimately into government policy decisions on community cohesion and social justice.

Creative programme

The company is currently working on its Year Two programme, Dis-Connected, with a new play, Castaways, commissioned from writer Atiha Sen Gupta, who is writer-in-residence at Stratford East and winner of the IAR Award for Best Playwright.

In Year One, Mandala collaborated with writer Nadia Davids, academic researchers and young asylum seekers to find and explore their stories.

Young people are involved in script development through creative workshops, followed by rehearsed readings to invited audiences before each play is produced.

Working in partnership with Mandala, we intend to undertake a programme of research into the effect which watching live theatre has on participants, in particular in relation to the development of empathy, and other citizenship dispositions, and the development of prosocial behaviour.

Victoria Elliott, Associate Professor of English and Literacy Education, University of Oxford

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Innovative work

“By creating a truly joint project, we hope to create ground-breaking research which is of use to the arts sector as well as furthering our understanding of the educational benefits of theatre.”

Victoria Elliott, Associate Professor of English and Literacy Education, University of Oxford

Theatre for social justice

Mandala’s aim is to join people together to empower, enlighten and inform.